Wystwood

60. Crypt of white tombs

Lark had hurried ahead into the antechamber, undoubtedly trying to put as much space between himself and Yue as possible. After leaving the study with Ada, Yue had stalked down the staircase, turned at the bottom, and left without a word.

Falling behind, Ada slowed to clasp her grandmother's golden chain around her neck and then tucked the heart under her shirt. She felt the weight of the locket beat against her chest as she walked, the metal already warming on her skin.

Looking up as she came to the antechamber, Ada almost stumbled down the last step. Silhouetted in the opposite doorway was a hunched figure, backlight by candles and unmoving. Lark loitered behind a nearby barrel, trying to make it look as though he was fiddling with his cuff instead of holding back a yelp.

As Ada's eyes got used to the dim light, she saw Hester shuffle from the doorway into the chamber, her scars seeming darker without the burning sage bundles.

"Walk with me?" she asked Ada, though it sounded more like a command than a question. She motioned to a doorway that didn't lead back to the infirmary.

Ada glanced at Lark, who shifted a look towards the old fae, and then gave Ada an awkward shrug. Before he could get called back, Lark slipped behind Hester and raced off.

Ada tried to cover her groan as she replied, "Alright then."

She matched Hester's pace through the passageways, keeping her head lowered as fae flittered past, going about their daily chores. They were travelling further into the Stone Circle, but Ada didn't look up to get her bearings, as her thoughts had returned to her previous walk with the old woman.

"I've been thinking," Ada said, "about when we spoke about Min's mother. I thought perhaps—"

"How much do you know about the Lady of Wysthaven?" Hester abruptly asked, her voice unusually quiet even though there were no longer any fae nearby.

"Well, not too much," Ada replied honestly. "I know she lives in the tower in the centre of the city, and that the Hounds do her dirty work. I know that she persecuted the fae who practiced magic, and that's why the Stone Circle stays hidden down here." She thought for a moment. "I know I need to get her name for you all, and then you..."

"Will have power over her," Hester finished. "Games of names and power and magic."

Ada didn't answer. If there were those who truly saw this all as just a game of strategy, then it felt crushingly cruel that she had never even been told the rules.

Hester continued, "And I'm sure you find it unfair that you have been dragged into our affairs." Ada flinched, almost tripping in the low light. "But if you had seen what she did to our city. If you had seen the torment of those days. Of course, magic had wrought some terrible things, as you've experienced for yourself with my sisters. The fae built awful tools to do awful acts, working with blood and making bargains without a care.

"But what she did to us was worse than blood magic and insanity. She holed herself up in that tower and ordered people dead in their homes, had families strung up from iron chains like ornaments beneath her windows. You could walk the bank of the canal and have shoes no longer than a finger wash up at your feet."

Ada shuddered, wanting to pry the images from her head, but Hester persisted, "You see, there were so few who turned to sanguinary magic, and so many who knew the good their skills could produce for faekind, and so Cast despite the Lady's rulings. They saved lives, but lost their own because of it."

Ada thought of the man she had seen hanging from the Lady's iron necklace, whose crime had been to buy a single, healing flower.

"We live down here, without sunlight or starshine, because we have no other choice. To survive in that city and hide our true natures would be no life at all, and it would be a disgrace to all those who gave their lives before us."